


Breathe

by elumish



Series: Werewolves 101 [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Sexual Submission, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Nemeton is there, in his head, pulsing behind his temples, and he wants it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time after Pack.

There’s a Go board in front of him, and he picks up a black piece from the pot and sets it down. The Nemeton gives him its approval, and he picks up a white piece and places it on the board, looking up at himself. He’s pale, almost gray, and his fingers are trembling as he reaches out and picks up a black piece from the pot. He’s tan, and the shadows are almost gone from under his eyes as he places another white piece.

The Nemeton shows him another place to set the piece, and he lifts his hand to drop it down, but it’s not his hand, he’s not moving it, and there are bandages around it, bloodied and frayed at the edges, and it settles around his throat and _squeezes_ , the bandages wrapping around his throat and constricting until he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t—

Stiles jerks upright, clawing at his throat, breath catching in his throat as he tries to suck air into his lungs, and he wheezes and gasps. The Nemeton is there, in his head, pulsing behind his temples, and he wants it _out_.

“Stiles.” A hand touches his cheek, warm and a little bit callused, and that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s not what it feels like. “Stiles. Breathe. Breathe.”

He gasps in another breath, and it wheezes through his throat and coughs its way back up. “Fuck. Can’t.”

“You can.” The other hand settles on his back, sweeping up and down, slow and steady. “Breathe with me.” Stiles can hear Derek pull in a breath, and he tries to copy it, tries to breathe with him, but there are bandages around his throat and the air can’t get through. “Come on, Stiles.”

“I need—” He gets just enough air down to speak, then has to stop and breathe again. “I need a pen. Or marker. And light. I need to see.”

The light snaps on, and he keeps his eyes fixed on his arms—not his hands, because they might not be his hands, and he can’t deal with that right now—as a ballpoint pen appears in his field of vision. He grabs it and uncaps it, then writes 己 on his arm. Nothing. Okay. Okay, he’s still him. But maybe it’s not—

He draws it again, but that might not be enough so he does it again and again, then switches arms because it could be just one arm, 己, 己, 己, 己, and it hurts, but he’s still alive, and he’s himself. He’s himself.

“Stiles?”

Stiles jerks, the pen skidding and digging into his skin, and it burns. He had forgotten Derek was there. “Yeah. Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.” He can breathe, now, the bandages gone and the Nemeton quiet. It hasn’t been this loud in years, but connecting made the draw stronger again, and he’s going to need to wait for it to settle. “Go back to sleep. I’m good.”

The hand goes back to sliding up and down his back, this time under his shirt, and Stiles feels a little bit of the tension fade from his shoulders. But he can’t let go of the pen, not yet. “What happened?”

“Nightmare.”

“What’s with the fives?”

Something sparks in the back of his head, and he asks, “Can I have one of your hands?” The hand that isn’t rubbing his back moves into his vision, and he traces 己 over his veins with the tip of the pen. Nothing, and he lets himself relax a little bit more. “It’s not a five. It’s not even written like a five, not if you write it properly, because the middle line is separate from the bottom lines and—that doesn’t matter. It’s, uh, it’s Japanese; it’s pronounced ‘onore’. It means ‘yourself’ and it’s, uh—I can tell you, but I need you to promise not to tell anyone other than your Alpha. Other than Laura.”

“Stiles—”

“I’m serious. This is a pack thing, not a me thing, and I need to follow my Alpha on this.”

Derek is silent for a second, then says, “Yeah. Nobody else to tell, anyway.”

Stiles still can’t look at him, not with the feeling of the nightmare still pounding on his tongue. Not when he feels like not quite himself, not yet. “A few years ago, back when I was still in high school, a druid came, a dark druid, and started sacrificing people. We’re not sure why, we never figured it out. And we killed her, but to do it, we needed to connect to a tree that’s in the territory, a magic tree, called the Nemeton. And doing that opened something up in us, in Scott and I, but Scott’s stronger than I am, so he managed to get it closed. But I—I ended up with a little piece of something in my head, of a demon that’s inside the Nemeton, and we don’t know why it didn’t come in more except maybe we didn’t give the tree enough power, just the two of us, so it only got in a little. But we got it out, and it’s gone now, and most of the time the Neme—the tree is, too, but I had to connect to it again, and now it’s in my head again, just a little bit.”

And then he realizes how that sounds. “Not the demon, the demon’s gone, the demon’s never getting in again, that door is closed, but the tree, it’s there just a little bit, just enough that I dream about it.” He looks down at the 己s again, scattered around his arms and clustered tightly around his wrists, and wants them _off_ , wants the evidence of what the tree did to him gone, and he starts scrubbing his wrists against each other, because he wants it off, he wants it off, he wants it _off_.

“Stiles.” Derek starts to reach for him like he’s going to give him a hug, and Stiles can’t deal with that, not right now; he jerks out of bed, moving before his feet are even planted on the ground, heading to the kitchen to try to scrub the marks off. It’s all wrong, this; he was never supposed to bring it with him out of Beacon Hills. The tree and the dreams and the Go board, they were supposed to stay in Beacon Hills, and that was one of the reasons he left, and he’ll connect to the tree again in a heartbeat if it means keeping Scott and his father and the territory safe, but that doesn’t mean he likes himself in the aftermath.

Derek’s footsteps approach behind him, and he chokes out, “I need you to tell me to get out of my head.”

Derek goes still. “You said not out of bed.”

Panic wells up in him. “Please,” he says, and can’t stop. “Please please please please please—”

“I don’t want to do something that you wouldn’t agree to normally.”

Stiles can’t do this, he needs out of his skin, and he starts scrubbing again, scrubbing and scratching and he wants it off, wants the bandages gone, wants it all—

“Stop.” He goes still, everything inside of him pausing. “Stay where you are.”

Instinctively, without thought, he moves, and Derek’s hand closes on the back of his neck, holding him still. “I told you to stay.”

Stiles locks his muscles down and they tremble, shake, as Derek’s hand disappears and his footsteps walk away. He wants to turn, look, but it feels like that will break something, will let out the thoughts he’s holding just below the tightness in his shoulders.

The footsteps come back, and then Derek says, “Put up your arms.” Stiles does, muscles still jumping below his skin, and a sweatshirt slides down them and over his body. “Arms down.” He lowers them. “Color?”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, and all that comes out is, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—”

“Stop.” His mouth snaps shut. “The only think you’re allowed to say is a color.”

Stiles breathes shallowly.

“I want to hear a color.”

“Yellow.”

“Do you need to be more active or more passive? You can answer that aloud.”

Stiles tries to picture that, tries to imagine having to _do_ —“Passive.”

“Okay.” A hand settles on the small of his back, muffled by the sweatshirt and his panic. “We’re going to go watch a movie.”

Guilt flood through him. “You can sleep—”

The hand shifts to his neck. “I told you—you’re only allowed to say a color. Walk.”

Stiles puts one foot in front of the other, blindly, and the hand on the back of his neck guides him towards the couch, where Derek pushes him down next to the arm of the couch and sits next to him so Stiles is closed in on both sides.

He puts Stiles’s hand on his thigh, and Stiles doesn’t think he can—

“If it gets too loud in your head, squeeze my leg. If you don’t, I’ll punish you tomorrow. Color?”

Stiles swallows. “Green.”

Derek leans over and grabs the remote, and the screen turns on in a rush of color. “Then watch the movie.”

Stiles tries to, he does, and it’s Disney or Pixar or something in between, but it’s just colors and lights and noise, and he can’t follow any of it, has no idea what they’re watching, doesn’t even know what the main character looks like. Because it’s not gone, it’s still there, that itch under is skin, that need to scratch and claw and pull the bandages off, to make himself feel so he knows it’s really him, and he can’t make it go away, can’t make it go away, can’t make himself breathe—

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Abruptly, Stiles can hear himself breathing in the silence, short and fast and panicking, and he doesn’t even know if the movie’s still on, doesn’t know anything except the thoughts in his head and the sound in the air and Derek’s hand on the back of his neck.

“I—I—”

“You’re not allowed to talk.” Derek is in front of him, suddenly, face blocking out everything, and Stiles doesn’t know if he can see or not. “You didn’t do what I told you to.”

Stiles clamps his mouth shut of an aborted word that turns into a whimper, and Derek’s other hand touches his on his face.

“If I ordered you not to think, would that help?”

Stiles tries to nod or do something, but all that comes out is another whimper. He can’t do this. There are too many thoughts but he can’t think, and he just wants it all to go away.

Derek stares at him for another moment, then reaches past him to grab something. A piece of cloth, and he wraps it around Stiles’s eyes, blocking everything out.

“Color?”

Stiles opens his mouth. “Green.”

“You’re not to talk. You’re not to look. You’re not to think. If you need to move, squeeze my hand. Otherwise, I will put you right back where you are. Color?”

“Green.”

“Are you comfortable?”

Stiles isn’t sure if all of his skin is his. “Green.”

“Good.” Derek sits back down next to him, one hand still fitted on the back of Stiles’s neck, the other with Stiles’s hand resting on it.

And they wait.

At first Stiles’s can’t stop trembling, because with everything else gone it’s just him and his thoughts and they are not a good thing to be alone with, and he needs to move, needs to get up, and he shifts—and Derek’s hand pushes him back into position.

He tries to move again, pulling his leg up to his chest to hide behind, and the hand his hand is resting on shoves it back down. Again, and Derek does the same thing, and then again, and he can’t go anywhere, he can’t move.

He doesn’t need to move.

It’s quieter now, calmer, and Stiles can’t make himself think, but that’s okay now. It’s okay. He can breathe.

But his shoulders get stiff, and so does his back, and so he squeezes Derek’s hand, then lowers himself down onto Derek’s lap, back to the cushions on the back of the couch, curled up on his side.

Derek doesn’t touch him except the hand on the back of his neck, and eventually he drifts to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I will write more of Nous Vous Protégeons, I promise, but this was like half written, so I just finished it.


End file.
